FAMILY RESEMBLANCES
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewer, Bellegeste. There's a character list at the end of the chapter.
The storm didn't break until the following Easter. For six months, Alison had studied, played, eaten and slept cheek-by-jowl with her unknowing, unacknowledged cousins. Charlotte was in her dorm, and – with David and Jonathon – in all her classes, Marianna and Stephen were her House prefects and Thierry was Head Boy. She cheered for Kerry, Kelly and Martin at Quidditch and Julien, Michael, Diana, Frank and Laura sat at the Gryffindor table in the Hall or passed her in the common room. And no one had suspected anything. No family pictures spotted, no family resemblances traced, no similarities in temperament or history noted. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief and tried not to think about inevitable discovery. For it was inevitable.
Every spare private moment that year, she discussed their plans with Severus, how they would handle it, what they would say, how much to tell their daughters, how to rearrange the Head Table seating if Ginny was unforgiving. He bore it as patiently as he could, and when he couldn't, he used the tried-and-true distraction method of Gryffindor-bashing. She saw right through it, and knew to change the subject.
And then in the middle of Easter break, Ginny dropped in unexpectedly at the house they always holidayed in, while Adam was picking up Alison after a sleep-over. He shouldn't even have been there. Normally, Manda did all the delivery services that involved entering the Snapes' home, but Amy-Rose had fallen from a high cupboard she wasn't supposed to be climbing and Manda was still with her at the hospital, waiting for her X-rays, while the babysitter minded the other children.
Unfortunately, it was Callie who opened the door and she'd never been told of any reason to keep Ginny from seeing their other guests. By the time Hermione and Severus realised she was there, it was too late.
Ginny took two steps into the room and stopped. There was a tense waiting silence as two redheads stared motionlessly at each other, then –
"Percy?" Her voice came out in a strangled whisper. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to continue, but no words came out.
Her brother's hand tightened on his daughter's shoulder. There was an unfamiliar hungry glitter in his eyes. He gulped, blinked and looked away.
"My name is Adam Wales," he said.
Ginny's mouth closed with a snap and she took a step towards him. Whatever doubts she'd harboured had vanished at the sound of that familiar voice.
"Don't be ridiculous, Percy. As if I wouldn't recognise my own brother!" Her brow puckered and her eyes narrowed in a long sideways glance. "Why aren't you wearing your specs?"
"Laser surgery," he said mechanically, then shook his head as if waking from a dream. "I'm not your brother. If you remember, Mrs Longbottom –"
"Mrs? Mrs Longb – Percy!" she spluttered.
He continued as if he hadn't heard, "You disowned me. In case you've forgotten, let me remind you what you said the last time we met, 'You're no brother of mine, Percy Weasley!'"
"I never – Well, you didn't think I really meant that!"
His chin tilted and his eyes narrowed.
"Didn't you? And I suppose your brothers didn't mean it either. Just a pleasant joke," he said sarcastically. "What a pity! Percy Weasley is dead; he's been dead for twenty years."
"Percy –"
"I'm not Percy!" he said through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps you should both sit down," Severus intervened. But Alison was twisting under her father's hand to stare up into his face.
"Wait a minute!" she said, her voice gradually growing louder and shriller. "Dad, why did Mrs Longbottom say – You're her brother? You mean I'm not a Muggle-born! I've been wanting to be part of this world forever –" she wrenched herself away and put hands on hips and chin pugnaciously forward. "Well, since I was five anyway, and you mean I always was and you didn't tell me?"
"Alison –"
"You didn't care how much you hurt your family, did you?" Ginny sneered. "You never cared –"
"Shut-up!" Adam/Percy flung at her, his face flaming as bright as his hair. "I have nothing to say to you, Ginevra Molly Weasley. Not now; not ever! Alison," his voice softened. "I did what I thought was best. I didn't want them to hurt my family the way they did me. I wanted you to have a better life –"
"No, Dad, you tried to rob me – us – of what's ours by right, bring us up as Muggles when we weren't anything of the kind –"
Callie nudged her sister as they looked back and forth at the speakers, "Look out! Dad's gonna blow!"
Cammie rolled her eyes.
"Not if mum blows first," she said. Their mother's temper was more explosive, but their dad's was much scarier.
Alison was still yelling.
"I can't believe you, Dad! Does mum even know? How could you –"
"Alison!" It was his Professor Snape voice, dangerous enough to silence most first-years with a single syllable.
"See! Told you," Callie whispered. Their mum looked more sad than angry.
"That's enough, Alison! Apologise to your father, then not another word!" their father rapped out.
Alison turned on him,chin thrust forward, hair springing into a tangle.
"Are you talking as my teacher or my pretend-uncle?" she hissed. "Because I don't care if you give me detentions with Filch till the end of the year! And anyway, I have five real uncles –"
"Six," Ginny murmured. "You have six."
"Real uncles who count more than you!"
"She's certainly a Weasley, with that temper," Ginny muttered, lips curling wryly. But Callie and Cammie were sharing apprehensive glances. It was never wise to talk back to dad. Not in his role as teacher or family elder, pretend or otherwise.
Professor Snape looked down his hooked nose at his friend's daughter as if she was a very small, very slimy worm not even worth chopping up.
"Come here, Miss Wales." His voice was as quiet and sharp as one of his knives.
Alison gulped and took a step towards him.
"Closer. Yes, that will do." He waited till she looked up under her eyelashes at him. "You will not speak to your father or myself in that tone again."
She bit her lip.
"No, sir. Sorry, sir," she muttered, then raised her head defiantly. "But he lied to me! You both lied to me! And Aunt Hermione lied too."
"We did not. Merely, we didn't tell you. It was your father's story to share and he judged the time not right."
"Lying by omission is just as much lying," she recited. "You said so when Cammie and I –"
"Shh," hissed her partner-in-crime. "Don't remind him!"
One darkling glance silenced his daughter. He turned back to her friend and raised an eyebrow.
"My memory does not need refreshing, but perhaps yours does. I expect three feet from you by the first day of term on the difference between falsification and keeping confidences," he said dryly. "I suggest you start immediately. Your father and your aunt need half-an-hour without the dubious pleasure of your company. We will discuss this with you – and your sisters – later."
As Alison was about to pass through the door after her friends, he added, "By the way, you may have those detentions you were so eager for. Not with Filch, I think. Professor Longbottom has been looking around for a volunteer for such trifling jobs as raking manure and grooming the Tentacula. Report to him the first day of term." He glanced at his friend. "With your permission, of course, Adam."
"I shouldn't dream of interfering in school matters."
Alison stared at the Professor. He was putting her in detention with her uncle? And her uncle – her uncle! – was by far the most approachableteacher in the school. It wouldn't be hard to ask him all sorts of things about her family and her dad's schooldays. She glanced at her dad then. He looked so small and sad and tired. She ran back in to give him a hug.
"Thanks, Daddy," she said and, glancing at Cammie's dad, added, "Professor."
There was a silence after she left. Ginny was glaring at each of them in turn, her lips pressed tight and thin.
Adam sighed.
"I don't know how you do that, Severus. It must be so useful."
"Moderately," Severus sighed in turn, walking over to stand by him. "It works better on other people's children than my own." He looked around for Hermione and, finding she had come to stand next to him, laid his hand on her arm in a rare public show of affection. "Do you want us to stay?"
"No, we don't!" Ginny said instantly.
"I wasn't asking you. Adam?"
Ginny glowered, her hand on her wand.
"I thought you were my friends!" she burst out. "How could you, Hermione? And after Neville and I stuck up for you through everything! How long? How long have you been lying to me?"
Hermione met her gaze squarely.
"I've known about Adam for about six years. Since Cammie and Alison started infant school together, just as I told you. And you must see that it wasn't my secret to tell."
"Bollocks!" Ginny spat. "He's my brother!"
"Was your brother," Percy interpolated.
Hermione took a deep breath.
"Ginny, please listen –"
"Why are you taking his side? Why can't you just stay out of it?"
"Because you've always had a tendency to hex first and ask later." Hermione shot a pointed look at Ginny's wand hand. "And because you might forget that Adam hasn't carried a wand in two decades."
"Stop calling him Adam! He's Percy; my prat brother Percy Weasley, that joined the Ministry and quarrelled with all of us and got himself k-killed in a ridiculous accident."
She'd cried very few times in her life. This was one; Percy's funeral another. She scrubbed angrily at her face after the first few drops and glared at Adam, who was staring at the floor, his hands clenched and his mouth set.
"Why are you being such a stubborn idiot?" she demanded. "It's such a long time ago. All you have to do is ask and I'd forgive you."
"How very magnanimous," he said bitterly. "I don't need your forgiveness. I never did. I had a right to think and feel differently to the rest of you and I don't have anything to apologise for."
"What about those horrible things you said to Dad?" she challenged.
He stood up straighter and tilted his chin up.
"Our father was impulsive and irresponsible and he left all the work of being a grown-up and a parent to Mum. And now that you're a parent, you know that too."
"He was our father. You should have respected him."
"Maybe I would have if he'd ever respected me. Or if I hadn't seen him breaking the law, abusing the public trust, misusing his position to carry out his own agenda. I worked at the Ministry; I know he did all those." For the sake of the Order; for Dumbledore; or just to feed his obsession with all things Muggle.
"You haven't changed, have you? Still the same stuffed shirt niggling over your narrow interpretation of the rules –"
"No, I haven't changed. I'm still the brother you didn't want. This is rather pointless, isn't it?" His eyes blazed and he veiled them quickly.
"You're wrong! Hermione, why didn't you ever tell him how wrong he was?"
"Ginny –" Hermione came towards her with hands outstretched and lips slightly pursed.
Ginny evaded her and turned on her heel.
"See if I ever talk to you again! Traitor!" she flung over her shoulder as she slammed her way out.
The three left in the room looked at each other.
"That went well," Severus remarked sourly. "I suppose you'd like to leave, Adam, before she comes back with reinforcements. What would you like us to tell them?"
"Sorry. I never meant to ruin your lives too," Percy said wretchedly.
"My life is hardly ruined if a few less Gryffindors talk to me," Severus murmured, with a provocative look at his wife. "I'd count it rather a benefit."
She smacked his arm. He caught her hand and curled his fingers around it. Their eyes met.
"Nasty, disagreeable man," she said pleasantly, making a face at him."What if they don't talk to me?" His fingers squeezed gently and she turned to their friend. "Don't worry about it, Adam. Ginny's angry now, but she'll cool down."
"That makes it worse in a way," he replied. "Are you saying that if I'd stuck it out, things would have changed? We'd all have made friends again?"
She shook her head and sighed.
"I hope we can do better than we did as hot-headed teenagers. We're all older and wiser now. Even the twins have grown up a bit. I don't blame you for leaving; nor for asking our silence. Both were your decisions to make. If I got caught in the middle, it's not your fault, any more than it is Ginny's."
"What do you wish us to tell them?Are you willing to see them, to hear from them, to tell them about your life?" Severus probed.
"If they want to speak to me, they can do it in your presence, in this house. I won't speak to them elsewhere. You can tell them the basic facts, but if they use them to find me and harass my family, I'll file a complaint to the Ministry for using magic in front of Muggles."
"I'm not sure that will be enough to stop Ron or the twins," Hermione warned. "They haven't changed that much."
"I didn't think they would, but at least this time I'm not alone," He paused for thought and added, "I suppose I can talk to my mother if she wants to see me. And if you don't have time, I might accept Bill as their spokesman if he agrees to my conditions."
"I have time."
Percy forced a smile.
"Thanks. Thanks for standing by me. For everything."
He left then and Severus turned to his wife.
"I've a few things to do at Hogwarts before dinner." Except for the long summer break when the school closed each year, he usually divided his time between school and home during holidays. "But I suspect we'd better face the imminent Weasley invasion together. I can spare two hours."
"That should be enough time for them to have been and – I hope –gone. But we'd better speak to our girls first."
"I noticed you warded the room after they left. Have they brought another set of Extendible Ears into the house?" One eyebrow raised, straight firm mouth; he wasn't angry yet but just on the verge.
"Just a precaution." She smiled. "Callie's too much like you when it comes to finding out what you don't want her to know."
A little while later, they had further proof of that.
"I knew something was strange," Callie admitted. "Of course, I saw the resemblance between Uncle Adam and Laura Weasley's dad. I'm not stupid." She and Laura didn't speak, but she'd seen her buying school supplies with her father once. Most of the other Weasley dads were either chunkier or balding.
Hermione acknowledged this with a sigh. Ron, alone of his brothers, refused to set foot in their house and had managed to imbue his children with some of his hostility, despite his wife's influence.
"Indeed?" Severus glared at his daughter. "And yet you allowed a Weasley to meet him when you knew there was a secret?"
"I never thought it was anything like this," she said candidly. Candour from Callie was always a danger sign. "To tell you the truth –"
"Yes, do tell us the truth," her father said grimly.
"Aunt Ginny told me once that they had a much older cousin who was an accountant. I thought maybe Uncle Adam was his son. Frank said – Never mind that."
She peeped up through long eyelashes at her father. He gave her a measuring look, ignoring Cammie's muttered, "You never told me."
"You didn't think we might be trying to keep them apart? That we might have good reason to do so?" He gave her the scowl that set students cowering and she sent back a deprecating look.
"I thought the grown-ups knew and the secrecy was just so us kids wouldn't find out," she explained.
"And you thought you could force a revelation by engineering a meeting?" Hermione eyed her older daughter sternly. "Honestly, Callie! Why didn't you ask?"
"You wouldn't have told!" She watched her father warily. Timing was everything in an argument with Dad, she thought. If you waited too long to placate him, he could hold a grudge for the longest time. "I'm sorry, OK? But if you'd just stop treating me like a child, I'd have known to delay Aunt Ginny till you could get Uncle Adam safely away." Her sister and mother discreetly rolled their eyes at each other. Callie was the expert in coaxing the difficult, but occasionally delightful, man they all adored. "I'm fourteen, dad, not four!" she added.
"Go on. Do explain how this is all our fault and you're completely innocent of any wrongdoing," Severus growled.
"Never mind that. Now that we know this much, you can't mean to keep the rest secret!" She tilted her head sideways and widened her eyes. It was the trick she'd been using to defuse his temper since before she knew she was doing it.
"No doubt it would only precipitate another disaster caused by your attempts to ferret out more information," he grumbled.
He wasn't going to blow, Cammie thought. It was safe to join in.
"So you are going to tell us, right?" He turned a dark-eyed glower on her. It had no effect.
"Much safer," Callie encouraged.
His lips thinned.
"You know the bare bones of it. Why don't you tell us what you've deduced."
"Uncle Adam is really Frank's Uncle Percy, but he went into hiding in the Muggle world and changed his name and everything. And he didn't tell his family," she said.
"Was it the war?" Cammie interrupted. "Did he go undercover and then not know it was safe to come back?"
"Don't be silly, of course it wasn't. D'you think Mum and Dad wouldn't have told him?" Callie said scornfully, resuming the argument that had been interrupted by Alison's departure and their parents' entry. "They didn't seem very happy to see each other, did they? I bet he had a fight with his family and ran off in a huff. He was a Gryffindor, wasn't he? Weasleys always are."
"But he wouldn't have had to become a Muggle, just because of that! That's just silly," Cammie argued.
"Don't judge when you don't know all the facts," her father said. "Gryffindors!" he muttered under his breath.
Hermione cleared her throat meaningfully. He glanced sideways at her accusing eyes and sighed.
"I forgot I was at home," he apologised.
She gave him the sceptical look that reminded him she knew very well what part he'd played in the war and just how long he'd have lasted if such forgetfulness had ever been a habit. Callie and Cammie's eyes met and both looked down to hide their smiles. Their dad was so transparent sometimes.
"He hadn't been getting on with his family for a long time by then," he told them."They supported Potter and he was a Ministry man. He moved out of home the year Voldemort returned, but he didn't leave for the Muggle world until a week after Voldemort was defeated."
"Was it because he didn't want to admit that he was wrong?" Cammie asked.
"It wasn't that simple," he explained. "The Ministry and the Order both made mistakes. He still believes he was right and there is something to be said for his point of view. But those details don't concern you. He decided it was better to make a clean break than to live on the edge of their lives as the family outcast. The family connection kept returning to haunt him. The Ministry tried to use him as a bridge – the other Weasleys were very close to Potter, of course – and some of his brothers were not very forgiving."
"You mean the Wizard Wheezes brothers, don't you? Were they like their kids?" Hexing Slytherin robes pink had been just the first of many pranks from David and Jonathon, while Kerry and Kelly were legendary for having charmed the Hall ceiling to snow feathers their second year.
"Worse!" their mum said, sharing a reminiscent glance with their dad. "Who do you think made that bit of swamp on the fifth floor? It used to cover the whole corridor and Filch had to punt students across it for weeks!"
"Still, it was silly for Uncle Adam to just up and leave," Cammie said thoughtfully. "I'd never do that."
"I hope we'd never make you feel you had to," her mother replied. "You know how miserable it is if we argue and it's three to one against you. In his family, it was usually eight against one, with him as the one."
A/N In canon, the trio seems to stay at school during Easter, but that doesn't mean everyone does. Most boarding-schools do send students home then.
Character list
Severus Snape (Deputy Head, Slytherin Head, Potions master) m Hermione Granger
ch:
Calendula Marigold (Callie) - 3rd year
Camomile Aster (Cammie) - 1st year
Gerrilyn (Gerry) Nott and Tavia (Tavie) Greengrass are Callie's best friends.
Adam Wales (aka Percy Weasley) m Amanda (Manda)
ch:
Alison - 1st year, age 12
twins Amalie (Am) and Adelaide (Addie) - age 11
Anthea (Thea) - age 10
Abigail - age 9
Aglaia (Aggie) - age 7 1/2
Amy-Rose - age 6
Alfrida - age 5
twins Arielle and Aislynn - 3 1/2
Molly Weasley
Bill Weasley m Fleur Delacour
ch:
Thierry - Head Boy, 7th year
Louise - 5th year, Beauxbatons
Jeanne-Paule - 3rd year Beauxbatons
Julien - 2nd year
Charlie Weasley m
ch:
Marianna - 6th year, Prefect
Martin - 5th year, Quidditch team
Charlotte - 1st year
Natalie - age 10
Fred m
ch:
Kerry - 4th year, Quidditch team
Jonathon - 1st year
George
ch:
Kelly - 4th year, Quidditch team
David - 1st year
Ron Weasley m Susan Bones
ch:
twins Michael Jacob and Diana - 6th year
Laura Johanna - 3rd year
Neville Longbottom (Herbology Professor) m Ginny Weasley
ch:
Stephen - 5th year, Prefect
Frank - 3rd year
Minerva McGonagall (Head) m Amory Marchant (Gryffindor Head, Defense Professor)
Harry Potter m Hannah Abbott